“Hello?”
“Muto, it’s me. Sorry for calling from an unfamiliar phone number.”
“I-Is this Kinji?! Where are you right now?! Your girlfriend is in trouble!”
“She’s not my girlfriend, but if you’re referring to Aria, she’s right here next to me.”
Goki Muto was an excellent student in the Logi division. Keeping relations with the guy seemed to be my inescapable fate, but the time had finally come for it to pay off.
“Wait…What are you doing…?!” Muto said, confused.
“G…gir…girl…”
Having been called my girlfriend, Aria displayed her proneness to blushing and became a stuttering mess. She looked like she was about to start protesting so I placed my index finger on her lips and put a stop to it.
“…Ngh!”
Aria became redder still, but more importantly, she stiffened up and remained quiet.
“…Muto, I’m surprised you knew about the hijacking. Is it on the news?”
“It’s been big news for a while now. A passenger probably used one of the phones inside the plane to report the incident. The guys at Connect looked up the list of passenger names in no time. Aria’s name was included so we all gathered here at the classroom.”
I gave a brief explanation of our current situation to Haneda Control Tower and Muto. I told them how the plane had been hijacked and that the perpetrator escaped. I also mentioned that we were hit by missiles and two of our engines were destroyed.
“ANA flight six hundred, remain calm. That B737-350 was made using the most state-of-the-art technology. It can fly without any problem using just the remaining two engines. That’s a benefit that won’t change regardless of how bad weather conditions are.”
Aria showed signs of relief at hearing the information Haneda Control Tower provided.
“More importantly, Kinji, you said the two engines that were destroyed were the inner engines, right? Tell me the number on the fuel gauge. There should be a square-shaped screen a little above the center of the EICAS (Engine-indicating and crew-alerting system). You’ll see a circular meter with two rows of numbers, each with four digits. Below that, there are three graduations next to the word ‘Fuel’. Tell me the number that’s in the center, marked ‘Total.’”
That was a vehicle geek for you. Muto spoke as if he were looking right at the instrument board.
“It just became five-forty. It seems to be dropping little by little. It’s at five thirty-five now.”
I heard Muto click his tongue after I told him what he wanted to know.
“Damn it…it’s really leaking excessively.”
“The fuel’s leaking…?! T-Tell me how to stop it!” Aria cried hysterically.
There was a short pause.
“There’s no way to stop it. Simply put, the engines of the B737-350 that are closer to the fuselage are also the gates to the fuel system. If they’ve been destroyed, the leakage can’t be stopped no matter what you do.
“H-How much longer will the fuel last?”
“There might be a lot of fuel left, but it’s leaking out at a fast pace. I hate to tell you this, but…around fifteen minutes.”
“This state-of-the-art technology is really something.” I said in a word of sarcasm to the people at Haneda Control Tower.
“Kinji, I heard this from the guys at Connect, but apparently that plane had just been flying in circles above Sagami Bay. Right now, you’re flying above the Uraga Channel. Head back to Haneda. Considering the distance to other airports, that’s you’re only option.”
“That was my intention all along,” said Aria.
“…ANA flight six hundred, how are you piloting the plane? Make sure you don’t take it off of autopilot.”
“The autopilot went off-line a long time ago. I’m piloting the plan right now.”
Aria looked at the section of the instrument board where a red light that read ‘Autopilot’ was flashing, accompanied by a warning tone that beeped at the same tempo. I didn’t know the details, but Aria was probably right.
“…that being the case, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me how to land.”
“…it’s not the sort of thing an amateur can become capable of doing right on the spot… Currently, we’re preparing to engage in emergency communications with the nearby aircrafts in the area. We’ll try to find a captain with a long history of flying the same model plane…”
“There’s no time,” I interjected. “I want you to open communications between us and every other aircraft in the vicinity. Can you do it?”
“W-Well, yes, that’s possible, but…what do you plan on doing?”
“I’m going to divide them up and have all of them explain to me at the same time the different procedures required to land this plane. Muto, you help out too.”
“At the same time?! Kinji, you’re not Prince Shoutoku!”
“I can do it. In my current state, I can do it. Could you be quick about it? We don’t much time, after all.”
I noticed Aria looking at me with an expression of surprise on her face. She looked like she was about to say something, so I silenced her with a wink of my eye and returned my gaze to the front of the plane. Flying under the clouds, through the raging rainstorm, I could see the lights of Tokyo coming into view beyond the black ocean. We were headed straight for the lights as if we were on a collision course to Tokyo.
Listening to eleven people speak at once, I instantly understood how to land the plane. Now I was able to read all the gauges on the instrument board. We were currently at an altitude of one thousand feet; that was around three hundred meters. It was a dangerous altitude to be flying at no matter how you looked at it, but since we would only remain airborne for ten more minutes, we couldn’t afford to waste a single drop of fuel, so I didn’t dare to climb even one meter higher. As we approached the airspace above Yokosuka, we heard a deep voice come from the speaker connected to Haneda.
“ANA flight six hundred, this is the Ministry of Defense, Aviation Administration.”
Aria and I exchanged glances.
The Ministry of Defense…?
“You are not granted permission to use Haneda Airport. The airport is currently being blockaded by the Self-Defense Force.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
The person who yelled was neither Aria nor I. It was Muto.
“Who is this?” demanded the deep voice.
“I’m Goki Muto, a Butei! Flight six hundred is leaking fuel! They can only fly for ten more minutes! There’s nowhere for them to make a diverted landing! Haneda is their only option!
“Butei Muto, yelling at me isn’t going to get you anywhere. This is an order from the Minister of Defense.”
I felt an unsettling presence and looked to the side of us. Aria followed my gaze outside the window and I heard her catch her breath. Right outside of the plane, an F-15J Eagle, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s fighter jet, was flying right next to us.
“Hey, Ministry of Defense. I can see one of your friends outside the window…”
“…He’s there to guide you. Follow him out to sea and head for Chiba. He’ll take you to a safe landing zone.”
Aria rotated the hand wheel to the right and starting turning the plane towards the ocean. As I disconnected the line to Haneda, I placed my hand on top of Aria’s, stopping her.
“…Don’t head out to sea, Aria. That guy was lying.”
“?”
“The Ministry of Defense doesn’t think we can land safely. Once we’re over the ocean, we’ll be shot down.”
“Y-You can’t be serious…! It’s not just us; there are civilians on this plane as well!”
“If we crash land in Tokyo it’ll be a big disaster. They’re desperate.”
My hand still on top of Aria’s, I turned the wheel to the left and had the plane head towards Yokohama.
“K-Kinji?” With her fingers somewhat stiffened, Aria looked up at me anxiously. It was a look that said I was being depended on.
“If that’s how they’re going to be, then we’ll respond respectively and take hostages. Aria, fly over the city.”
ANA flight six hundred flew over Yokohama Minatomirai and into the Tokyo metropolitan area. There were seven minutes of fuel remaining.
“So where do you plan on landing, Kinji? There’s no other airstrip in this city.”
“Muto, how long of an airstrip would we need?”
“For a B737-350 with two engines…I’d say about two thousand four hundred and fifty meters.”
“…do you know what the wind speed is over there?
“Wind speed? Reki, what’s the wind speed at Academy Island?”
“My sense is that five minutes ago, it was forty-one point zero two meters per second heading south-southeast.”
I heard the voice of Reki from Snipe in the background.